ABSTRACT
It has been stated that criminals are deficient in conscience, have no consciences, or have no ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Melanie Klein drew attention to the fallacy of these views. She stated that the delinquent had not a deficient conscience, but rather possessed a different kind of conscience, in which there were savage, cruel, or primitive internal authority figures. Many acts of cruelty are tokens in real life of a frightful fantasy system of extreme cruelty. Sexual cruelty seems to be compounded of similar factors. Cruelty to animals must be as common as that to human beings. The same factors are present. Manic mechanisms enable the rationalization to be made. Sometimes the cruelty seems to be unprovoked and quite meaningless. It is nearly always possible to trace the action to the unconscious constellation if time is spent on the task.
